West of Here

This "big, booming ruckus of a novel" (SFChronicle), from the Washington State Book Award–winning author of All About Lulu, chronicles a century of American progress in the fictional town of Port Bonita, Washington. Little more than a muddy outpost at the foot of the Elwha River in 1890, the town is populated by driven men like Ethan Thornburgh, who pilots the project to dam the mighty river, while in our own time men like his great-great-grandson are equally driven to tear the dam down and revitalize the region's fishing industry.

"[Jonathan] Evison, author of this audacious historical novel, manages a near-impossible feat: first, he creates an almost absurdly complex narrative structure, bridging more than 100 years of life in Washington State and encompassing multiple points of view, and then he grounds the sublime architectonic whole in the vividly realized daily lives of characters who exist completely in their individual moments but whose actions reverberate back and forth across time.... Any one of Evison's numerous major characters could have owned his or her own novel; that they coexist perfectly in this one, undiminished but without overwhelming one another, is testament to the book's greatness."—Booklist (starred review)